1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooking machine, and more particularly to an automatic cooking machine that has a PLC (program logic controller) to control the processes of the automatic cooking machine.
2. Description of Related Art
The closest prior art of which the applicant is aware is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,617 to Yu-Chuan Lee, filed on Oct. 20, 1987, entitled "Automatic Frying Machine".
Many different cooking machines have been developed to prepare stir-fried Chinese food. One such cooking machine is the "Automatic Frying Machine" which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,617 to Yu-Chuan Lee. The "Automatic Frying Machine" comprises a feeder device to automatically place materials into a cooker, a frying and stirring device and a mechanism to turn the cooker through 180.degree. for the purpose of serving the prepared food. The machine washes the cooker with a stirrer and water ejectors. The device can be operated in one process that includes material feeding, frying and serving and cooker washing.
Even through the cooking machine can feed, fry and serve the material and wash the cooker in a single process, it has several disadvantages as follow.
1. The automatic frying machine in accordance with the prior art only has a stir-fry cooker. As is well known, many Chinese foods such as carp with hot bean sauce, sweet and sour spareribs and chicken with dry red pepper need to be deep-fried first and then stir-fried. Consequently, the conventional machine must run two cycles to complete the cooking process. It is not convenient for user.
2. The stirrer is rotated in the stir-cooker during cooking. The action of the stirrer is different from that of a human cook. The lower materials in the conventional cooker are always in the bottom of the stir-fry cooker and cannot be evenly stirred.
The present invention has arisen to mitigate and/or obviate the disadvantages of the conventional automatic frying machine.